


Exit the Labyrinth: Icarus Flies

by Prismatic Bell (Nina_Dances_In_Technicolor)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Communication, Family, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Other, Theory Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-04-05 20:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4193388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nina_Dances_In_Technicolor/pseuds/Prismatic%20Bell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canon divergent from Episode 35. In a world where Crow's father is still alive, everything changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was first started in 2009, and I sat on it for a very long time. In 2015 I felt like it was time to finish what I started, and began a rewrite. As a result this story is not compliant with anything past Episode 64 and diverges from canon at Episode 35.
> 
> In rewriting it, I discovered that 1) I've grown unbelievably as an author, which only highlights how much further I have to go 2) I really loved writing this, and it's such a privilege to be able to fix it up now. I hope you enjoy the reading as much as I do the writing!

The first night is the hardest.

He lays flat on his back, stares at the ceiling and wonders if his kids are okay. The Director's mansion is no place for a Crow: fancy bed, real mattress with sheets and a blanket—two blankets!—that don't smell of mildew and industrial waste, or at least didn't before he climbed between them. But his choice was clear: come willingly, or come unwillingly. Unwillingly involved a detainee hypo, and so Crow didn't resist as he was pushed aboard a helicopter and flown away from the tiny island where even now a dead man curses his name and swears he'll have every drop of Crow's interfering blood.

He can't sleep. His whole life he's slept on whatever slightly-less-filthy surface might be available, and this soft bed is _too_ \--too soft, too warm, too clean, too normal. At last he throws the covers down on the floor and rolls up, and in spite of his fears he's out in minutes.

Peace lasts only as long as sleep, and even that's eventually broken by the fucking clown who first spotted him, then yanked him from his duel amid taunts Crow can still hear ringing in his ears. The clown snorts.

“My,” he says, and Crow pulls his hand from under the pillow to flip him off. “Such rudeness. I wouldn't behave that way to the Director, if I were you.”

“I'll behave how I fucking want, I didn't ask to get kidnapped,” Crow snaps. He sits up and brushes his hair out of his eyes, then wrinkles his nose. He knows he's no hothouse flower, but he has to draw the line at hair this greasy.

“The Director has asked me to bring you—“

Crow stumbles out of the blankets. They're loose, not sewn together into a sack like the ones he keeps at home, and keep trying to catch his feet. “In a bit.”

“The Director feels time is—“

“I'm getting a fucking bath first.” 

There's a bathroom attached to this bedroom; Crow used it last night, feeling his way around in the dark. With the light on it's quick work to shut the door in the clown's face and flip the lock before he can get the bright idea to try the knob.  
And then Crow turns around and realizes there's no bathtub. Instead there's a tiled area in the corner walled off with real, unbroken glass and some kind of wide shelf inside, and near the top of it a plastic knob full of holes Crow recognizes all too well from the time he's spent in Security.

It's a shower. 

He's not thrilled, but he can make it work, and when he turns one of the shining brass knobs and gets hit with a soft jet of warm water, he strips his bandanna out of his hair and makes short work of his jeans and vest. This is no Security shower, where each water droplet feels like a tiny bullet intent on opening his skin by sheer force and the water turns balls-numbingly cold after three minutes; this is like one of those hot summer rainstorms Crow actually likes going outside in, and he takes his time soaping up his hair, rinsing and then scrubbing the appealing combination of axle grease and street dirt from his skin. He should feel guilty about it, should be demanding a return to Satellite and his kids and Yuusei's side in this strange new fight against the enemies Yuusei calls Dark Signers and Crow—before he knew their origin—simply called “those weirdos in the hoods,” but it feels good to be _clean,_ and when he finally steps out of the shower and sees the black stains where his feet were he understands why. He really needs to work on hooking up a rig to bathe properly at home.

There are fresh clothes waiting for him when he gets out of the shower, and he isn't sure if he should be glad or angry that someone has gone to the trouble of procuring jeans and a T-shirt for him instead of the uncomfortable-looking dress clothes so many people in the city seem to wear. He decides to shelve the decision for now and pulls them on. They're his size, his worn leather belt needed only to hold the jeans in one place instead of to keep them from sliding right down off his hips, and so to Crow they feel as tight and restricting as a pair of Security's handcuffs. The clown is waiting just outside his room when he finally opens the door, feeling small and naked with his makeup all washed down the drain. A single look in the mirror (so big, so clean, so _new_ and uncracked) was enough to tell him that without eyeliner on he looks like an unusually muscular twelve-year-old, and it takes an effort to look Godwin's assistant in the face.

"No guards?"

The clown makes a noise like a sneezing cat. Crow can't help being amused. "The Director was of the opinion you might lose your way." 

His amusement ends when he steps into the massive office overlooking the city. The desk alone looks like it's worth enough to feed his kids for a year, and the man standing at the window, back to, is tall and still and hard enough to have been carved from stone. The clown retreats, and perversely, Crow almost wants to call him back. He does not want to be standing alone in this too-big room with its too-rich furnishings with this man.

"I'm here." He pauses. Hesitates. “Father.” No. “Godwin.” Better.

He stands his ground when the man turns to face him, in spite of those icy cool blue eyes that make part of him want to drop his own gaze and spit out an hourlong confession to everything he's ever done. Even face-to Godwin looks like some kind of statue carved out of a rock cliff; he doesn't have Crow's nose, or jawline, and sure as hell doesn't have his height. There might be something about the ears and eyes, but Crow decides it could be looking almost straight up skewing his perspective. Not staring, though—staring might mean he's somehow off-guard, somehow affected, that it matters that he has a father living and breathing affluence in the city while Crow struggles to feed his kids in the Satellite. _If_ he has a father. Redheads answering to Crow's general description can't be that rare.

"You resemble your mother." 

Crow can't help a flinch. He hides it behind a snort and puts his hands on his hips. Better than crossing them over his chest. He doesn't need any help to look smaller than he is.

"I want my kids."

"A very natural thing, given your place in the Star Guardian line, but at this precise moment it's far more important you take your place as heir than trying to produce one of your own.”

“I don't think you get it. I want _my kids_ ,” Crow says, putting as much stress as he can on the _my_. “The ones in Satellite. I can find my own way out of here, you know. And I can make sure you never find me. And then you'd be pretty fucked, if I get what's going on, but unless you're on Yuusei's side I really don't give a shit. I. Want. My. Kids. Clear enough for you?"

Godwin turns back to the window. "You live in a part of Satellite Security does not enter—"

"Bullshit,” Crow says, and hears a gasp behind him. The clown, returned from wherever he went off to. “This bastard behind me wouldn't of been around to pull me off that asshole you call a brother if Security didn't go into B.A.D. Hell, if you won't trust me and you won't send one of your own people, ask Yuusei. He can be in and out in five minutes.”

"It's best at present if Fudou-san is left to his task. Every trip he takes into that part of Satellite increases his risk."

"Then I really want my kids out of there. I'll go. I'll give you my fuckin' word I'll come back, and I ain't never broke it in my life, what the hell more do you want?”

"Your risk is also increased. Indeed, one might say you would be the ultimate prize for the Dark Signers." The cool-eyed bastard finally turns back to him. Crow resists the urge to cross his arms, replaces it with the urge to push out his chest, and then stops mid-push as he realizes just how much like a petulant child he must look. Instead he settles for his _don't even think about fucking with me Kiryu_ look.

"I guess somebody in Security's actually gonna be earning their pay this week, then," Crow says. "If you want me to work with you."

Godwin glances at the clown. It's just a flicker of the eyes, but in that second Crow knows he's won. He doesn't even need to hear the "very well" to know it's coming. The clown heads for the door.

"Hang on a minute." Crow pulls out his deck. He pauses, thinking, then flips through it and pulls out Hurricane Gale. “Show them this.” He raises his eyes again to meet Godwin's, steel against steel. 

"If I don't get this back just the way it is, deal's off."

Crow is surprised when his determination is met with a curt but solemn nod instead of more of that infuriating coolness. "You'll never know it's left your deck. Jaeger."

The clown takes Crow's card with as much care as if Crow were handing him the Blue-Eyes White Dragon itself. Crow watches it disappear into the little man's deck pocket with no small amount of trepidation. There _is_ a deck pocket, and that's something of a relief, but his deck is still technically breaking about half a dozen city laws. The clown heads out the door. Godwin takes a deep breath after it closes. Crow wonders what he's thinking—what strange plans and dreams are inside the man's head. At last Godwin goes to a massive bookshelf and pulls down something old and dusty and covered in cracked leather, and then something occurs to Crow, something important.

“I never told him where I live.”

Godwin wipes the dust off the cover with a clean cloth. “Under the Daedalus Bridge, off the former Pier Nine.”

“Yeah—wait, how did _you_ know, if you don't never go there?”

“Because it is where I would expect to find you.”

Crow stares. Godwin looks at him, face still blank as a clean paper sheet.

“Asshole,” Crow mutters, and walks out.

\------------

The office is still too big, the walls still too clean, the carpet still too soft beneath the unfamiliar house slippers Crow has been given. He opens his mouth, ready to ask what the fuck Godwin wants with him now, when he hears an unmistakable voice call his name.

“Crow-niichan!”

Crow drops to a crouch before he even thinks about it, feels Kokoro's head slam into his shoulder when she careers into his arms at full speed. He can smell oil in her hair, and doesn't even bother looking down to see if there are little black smudges on his fancy new tee-shirt. There will be. The beach he used to visit as a kid is still there, and the water is still relatively clear, but five kids in cold water with a heavy rip is a little more risk than Crow's willing to take on a regular basis.

Crow drops to one knee, kisses her temple and opens his arms to the rest of the kids. He doesn't know what's going on in Satellite right now, but all of his kids look significantly more worried than he'd expect after a single night alone. He's in between kisses and hair-ruffles when he hears a soft sound behind him: Godwin's feet.

"There were five.”

“Yeah,” Crow agrees, and slowly manages to shuffle all the kids around to face one way before nodding at Godwin. “Guys, this is Rex Godwin. He's the Director. You guys know what that is, right?”

Jace squints. “Your hair looks funnier on TV.”

Crow opens his mouth in dismay, ready to tell Jace to apologize, when Godwin lets out an amused-sounding “hm.” 

“I can't tell if yours is funny or not, under that bandanna,” he says, and before Jace can comment Hikari takes half a step out of the circle of Crow's arms and holds out a hand in a comically prim gesture Crow is sure she must have seen on television.

“It's a pleasure to meet you,” she says, in a clipped accent entirely city and not a touch Satellite, and Crow has to bite back a grin and wonder what she's been watching while he was out. “My name is Hikari.”

Godwin takes her hand and shakes it gently, just once, before bowing. “The pleasure is mine, Hikari-san.”

Hikari giggles. Kokoro stares up at Godwin, massive even when bent over Hikari's hand, and tries to hide behind Crow's shoulder. Crow reaches backward and ruffles her hair. “Kokoro,” he says, and then points to the two boys in his other arm who are trying to hide behind each other. “The little one's Daichi and this one's Seven.”

Godwin bows. Seven bows back at him a little too far and almost topples over. Daichi grabs Crow's shoulder and whimpers. Jace crosses his arms and makes a face. Crow rolls his eyes.

“And Jace,” he says, and shakes his head. “Jace, _behave._ ”

Godwin makes an amused noise. Crow thinks. “It's very nearly time for lunch. If you can all be ready, we'll eat shortly.”

Crow considers what “shortly” and “be ready” might mean, and then he thinks about the bathroom in the room he occupied last night and his heart sinks. Hard work and careful planning mean his kids all have shoes, but asking more than one change of clothes each is impossible. Being ready to sit at a clean table in a clean dining room eating off clean plates that might even match is a tall order. He frowns.

“I need a tub for the kids.”

“Turn right when you leave the study. There's a suite at the end of the hall.”

Crow doesn't wait to be dismissed; he just hoists Daichi onto one hip and Kokoro on the other, wiggles his elbows for Seven and Jace to each put a hand into, and heads out, Hikari trailing along with one hand on his belt. The room Godwin directed him to really _is_ a suite—there's a bathroom, and an exit onto its own patio, and the bed is so big Crow's pretty sure all six of them could fit with room to spare. He considers for a moment if this might actually be Godwin's room, and then pokes his head into the bathroom and changes his mind; there are towels, and there's soap set in the tub and the shower, but the sink counter is bare of the hairties and industrial-strength hairbrush he assumes Godwin must keep.

“Everybody strip and put your stuff in the tub,” he says, and as the tub fills with a small pile of clothes he turns on the water and starts scrubbing. The water turns first a dingy gray and then almost black, and he drains it before wringing everything as dry as he can and tossing it in a second pile. Then he refills the tub and gestures Jace and Seven into it. He assigns Hikari to the shower, pokes at the knobs until he's got the temperature set and reminds her to close the door behind her before taking his pile of washed clothes back into the main room and hanging them off bedposts and doorknobs and hoping the air in the room is warm enough to finish the job he started. It's not perfect, but it'll do.

He's barely finished before Seven is yelling about soap in his eyes, and Crow sighs and jogs back into the bathroom to finish Seven's hair before yelling can turn into crying. Kokoro and Daichi are playing some kind of game that involves smacking each others' toes. Jace is rolling his eyes.

“I tried to help, but he said _no_ ,” Jace says. Crow waves him off.

“If you're done, go get a towel,” he answers, and Jace clambers awkwardly out of the tub, kneeing Crow in the head as he goes. “Hey, watch your legs!”

“Sorry,” Jace shoots back over his shoulder, and then drops the towel over his head to ruffle his hair. Crow runs his fingers through Seven's hair one last time to be sure all the soap is out, then lifts him over the edge. With his luck, if he leaves them to their own devices one of the kids is going to try to climb out and land right on his balls. One thing he can say for bathing them in the ocean—nobody's accidentally castrated him yet.

He refills the tub a third time and calls Daichi, who's gotten into a butt-shaking contest with Jace. Daichi runs to the tub so quickly he almost slips on the tile floor, and Crow grabs him under the arms to swing him up and in. Daichi yells in surprise, and when Crow swoops Kokoro into the bath she squeals. 

“It's warm!”

Crow feels part of his heart break. None of his kids have ever had a hot bath. 

He bathes the two little ones while Jace and Seven wander around the bathroom and then out into the bedroom, a little more careful rinsing hair and getting them to their feet. Daichi keeps sliding all the way under to his shoulders, and Crow keeps making him sit up. Then he hears a yell.

“Hey, there's _clothes _in here!”__

Crow does not run. Instead he lifts Daichi and Kokoro out of the tub, knocks on the shower door, and dries them both off while Hikari turns off her water. Then he walks—very calmly and slowly and certainly not full of dread that his kids might have just ruined somebody's wardrobe—into the bedroom. 

The clothes he hung up are gone, and sitting on the bed is a small stack of kids' clothing. It's clean and dry and new and nicer than anything his kids have ever owned, and as they crowd around it to pick out something to wear Crow stands in the bathroom doorway, puts his face in his hands, and tries not to cry. 

\------------------------------- 

“Please, sit.” 

Crow does, in spite of himself. It might have something to do with lunch, where Godwin provided chopsticks for everyone and then wordlessly provided wet-naps when none of the kids used them. Manners they have—they do not shout or run or elbow each other at meals—but there are some things Crow is unwilling to dig out of the trash, and chopsticks are expensive in Satellite. To his kids, chopsticks are a thing people use on television. 

It might also have something to do with after lunch, when Godwin suggested the kids could sit on a patio outside the living room and color, and actually got paper and full boxes of crayons from somewhere. _New_ boxes of crayons, a thing his kids have never actually seen before. And then Godwin asked to “speak with him privately” and brought him to the office, where Crow is now sitting in a chair that's probably never even been sat in before. Godwin also sits—not behind the desk, but in the twin of the chair Crow's taken in front of it. He reaches for a pack of Seven Stars on the desk, taps them twice against its polished surface and then holds out the open end in Crow's direction. Crow eyes him suspiciously. 

“Didn't know you smoked.” 

“I don't,” Godwin answers. “Jaeger, however, does, and neither your nail-biting nor the empty pack in your old clothes have gone unnoticed. I won't pretend to approve of your bad habits, but now is not the time to suggest you attempt breaking them.” 

Crow waits a few seconds more, debating if he wants to admit he's been jonesing—and, yeah, chewing on his thumb—since about ten o'clock this morning. Finally he caves and takes a smoke. Godwin puts the pack back on the desk, offers a lighter, and waits until Crow's had a drag that tastes like menthol and bad dreams before Godwin rests his elbows on the arms of the chair and tents his fingers. 

“You have been in the city for just under 24 hours,” Godwin says. “It's well past time you learn why you're here.” 

“I know why I'm here,” Crow tells him, and then he stops to take another drag. He can't remember the last time he had a fag that wasn't stale as hell, and he's damned if he's going to let half of it burn away on nothing. “Your fucking clown kidnapped me when I was in the middle of a duel.” 

“Yes,” Godwin agrees. Crow has to give him credit for sheer balls. “A Dark Signer duel, in fact, for which you should be commended for your bravery, although less so for your foolishness. These are not duels to be entered lightly, and—“ There's a pause, and Godwin pulls the silk square out of his jacket pocket. He coughs into it heavily and then reaches for the pitcher of water on the desk. Crow takes his chance while Godwin's shut up. 

“I _know_ that,” he says, and frowns. “I ain't stupid. And you ain't neither, so you know Yuusei didn't get out to old Momentum following a little duel fairy. I saw the whole thing. Whatever that was, it ain't Kiryu no more. It don't sound like him and it don't duel like him, and if Yuusei don't get any help he's gonna fucking die going after those assholes.” 

Godwin holds up a single hand. Crow hears a low wheeze and guesses he knows why Godwin doesn't smoke. “I understand. You should know, then, that Yuusei has help. The other four Signers have agreed to fight, and three are with him in Satellite right now. They left the city late last night.” 

“After you brought me here?” 

“Yes. Strictly speaking, the six of you passed in transit. Jaeger brought you here while I traveled with the Signers to their departure point.” 

“And you fucking left me here!” Crow starts to make a fist, feels the filter between his fingers and takes another vicious drag, instead. He considers blowing it in Godwin's face and then stifles the urge, mostly because Yuusei would be incredibly disappointed if he knew Crow was sinking that low. Godwin shakes his head. 

“If I were to send you back to Satellite, right now, this very moment, and ask that you be left in the safest place possible, you would be dead before sunset. Right now, the Dark Signers will be occupied with gathering their forces to fight the Signers—a near-even fight at this precise moment. Were you in Satellite, they would abandon the battle at once to seek you out. The very best duelists of legend couldn't survive that onslaught.” 

“I want to help—" 

“That is why you are here.” Godwin tents his fingers again. “I will give you the same information I have imparted to the Signers, and then you may ask you any questions you like. Should I be unable to answer, I will tell you. Is that fair?” 

Crow considers. Then he nods and takes another drag. He has a feeling he won't like what's coming. Godwin coughs again. 

“The fight between the Signers and Dark Signers has been foretold for five thousand years,” Godwin tells him. “The Dark Signers carry cards that may summon the Earthbound Gods—these you have already seen. These gods were wicked creatures, sealed by the same tribe from whom you and I are descended: the People of the Stars. From among their ranks they chose five true-hearted warriors, who became the first Signers. These five did battle with the Wicked Gods and sealed them in the earth. And there they remained to sleep forevermore, until the geoglyphs we call the Nazca Lines were uncovered. With their remains discovered the seal on the gods weakened, until now it has broken completely at last and these gods are free to roam the earth again. But destiny has called the spirits of those five warriors of old back to life. That is the battle being waged in Satellite now—the ancient one of five thousand years ago.” 

Godwin stops for another sip of water. “As far as my researches have been able to discover—and they have been extensive—those chosen as Dark Signers, the human avatars of these ancient gods, are beyond hope. I know Yuusei hoped that your friend Kiryu might be saved. I don't know if you share that wish, but best you know the truth.” 

“Kiryu and me was quits way before Security took him in.” 

There's a pause long enough for Crow to take his last drag and stub out the butt. Then Godwin breaks it. 

“Your leader, Kiryu,” he says. “Were the pair of you, you and he . . . ?” 

Crow makes a face. _What the hell?_ Then it dawns on him, and he shakes his head. 

"Not exactly. I thought for awhile him and Yuusei were, you know, together, but I don't know no more. Yuusei don't do things by halfs.” 

“But had they not been—assuming your conjecture is correct, that is.” 

Crow snorts. “You ain't never seen Kiryu when he was alive, if that's what you think. He could've had his pick of any girl in Satellite, and a pretty damn big chunk of guys, too. Convict kid who could barely read would of been a dozen steps down, for him.” 

“That doesn't change your feelings.” 

“It don't matter, if I ain't there, does it? I ain't even the one fighting him.” 

“It might. Fate has bound the Signers and Dark Signers together, and you, as the Star Guardian ascendent, are bound to both.” 

Crow considers how much of his past he wants this man to know. At last he shakes his head. “I wouldn't of said no if he asked, when we were all still friends. But it went bad. When we went back to help him I only went for Yuusei. I didn't trust Kiryu with him. Yuusei'd save him if he could 'cause Yuusei wants to save everybody no matter what they did to him. I ain't like that. Nobody fools me twice.” 

“I see.” Godwin looks down. Not really looking away, Crow thinks. Thinking. At last he puts his hands down. Crow breaks in before Godwin can drag the conversation in a new direction. 

“There's five Dark Signers,” he says, and Godwin's eyes flick up to his face. “Yuusei told me about four Signers. There's him and Jack and those two girls.” 

“Izayoi Aki and the child Ruka, yes,” Godwin agrees. Then he goes silent. Crow frowns. Then he lunges forward and shoves Godwin's sleeve up his arm. 

The skin under it is bare. Not entirely unmarked—Crow sees a few weird round scars he'd think were old zits if they were on Godwin's face, and another one like a rope Crow recognizes as a burn—but the dark red mark he's expecting isn't there. Godwin stares at him, placid as ever, and Crow resists the urge to put a fist in his face. 

“At this precise moment, the Signers are not your concern,” Godwin says. “I understand you have a predilection toward mechanical technologies.” 

Crow keeps glaring, because maybe he'll sound less pathetic when he finally opens his mouth. “I don't know what that means.” 

“You have a talent for building machines.” 

Crow shrugs. “I guess.” 

Godwin holds up a hand, then heads behind his desk. He comes back with a book and hands it to Crow, who flips it open and thumbs through the pages before biting his tongue. There are very few paragraphs, and the type is small. In one column he sees the phrase _applied torque_ and almost groans. Crow can put things together, but that weird instinctual understanding of the _technical_ part, why one bolt is better than another or a specific metal is too light, is all Yuusei. Who can read better, too. Shit. 

“This book is a compendium of two separate pieces of technology,” Godwin tells him. “It compares the original structure of Momentum to the Moon Tower—the ancient ceremonial structure of the People of the Stars. I don't anticipate your being able to understand all of it, although this particular text is written in lay language. If you would like to be of assistance in this fight, what I would ask of you is that you do your best to read the text and find the similarities between the Moon Tower and Momentum. It's my belief—although nobody from Security has been able to actually enter the original site to confirm this suspicion—that the Dark Signers are using old Momentum as a stand-in for that long-ago structure. Knowing which parts of the structure are of use to them would be of great use to the Signers.” 

Crow considers for a moment. Nothing he learns here can be of use to the Signers unless it goes through Godwin; he has no contact with them, after all. But—as Kiryu used to say before the bad times started— _curiosity killed the Crow,_ and at last he rests a single elbow on the book. 

“Tell me one thing first. No. Two things.” 

“If I can.” 

“Who the fuck _is_ the fifth Signer, then?” 

The side of Godwin's mouth twitches, and then he hesitates so long Crow almost repeats himself before pulling off his left glove and rolling up the sleeve. 

The arm underneath, Crow realizes, is some kind of dark metal. And faintly outlined on it in lines darker still, as though someone heated the metal to near-melting, is a shape that, with some imagination, could be a head. 

“I'm left-handed.” 

“Oh don't your life fucking _suck_ ,” spills out of Crow's mouth on autopilot. He barely even notices. He's too busy staring at the conglomeration of tiny plates and screws that, under the glove, look like a perfectly normal hand. He's seen people with prosthetics before, sure; there are people who sell them in the black market. But he's never seen one like this—his first thought that it's a marvel Yuusei would cream his jeans to study, his second that it looks somehow old and almost worn out. Godwin rolls his sleeve back down. 

“Your second question?” 

Crow tears his eyes away from the mechanized wonder and looks back at Godwin's face, where one eyebrow is raised in a gesture he recognizes all too well from his own face. He bites his tongue and wishes he had a second cigarette; the buzz from the first one is wearing away all too quickly. 

“Rudger said you left me under the bridge.” 

“I did. Not to abandon you. But because trying to carry you on a motorcycle would have been to gamble your life far more than I was gambling my own. Had things gone as planned I would have been back in Satellite under an assumed name three days later to pick you up, and we would have traveled back to the city on the workboat. Instead . . . ” Godwin gestures with his metal arm. “This happened.” 

“So you were the legendary man.” Crow keeps his voice low. The last thing he needs—the last thing any of them need—is for Godwin to know what this means. To Crow. To his kids. To all of them. He can't afford to let his voice break. 

“That is what they came to call me, yes. When I stopped being Number 42-AA-1699.” 

Sixteen-ninety-nine. Crow knows that number from the facility. “Going 1699” is inmate slang for doing something widely regarded as crazy. He's gone 1699 more times than he can count. The sudden realization—that this must be the weird phrase's origin—slams into him and leaves bitter disappointment behind, so thick he can almost taste ichor on his tongue. He looks down at the cover of the text Godwin handed him and wills his voice to stay steady. 

“I'm gonna need a notebook.” 

\----------------------- 

"But why can't I stay with you?" 

"Because you and Hikari are supposed to sleep in here, like big girls, okay?" Crow brushes Kokoro's hair off her forehead and puts a kiss on her temple. "Get some sleep. I'll see you in the morning, sweetheart.” 

He slips out as quickly as he can, not wanting to answer any more questions—like why they have separate rooms here but not at home, or how there's a little light to stay on by the door in case they need the bathroom in the middle of the night, or how they don't have to use a bucket. 

He takes his time in the bathroom attached to the room Godwin put him in—washes his face, takes out his earrings and rinses them before leaving them to dry on the sink, strips down to his new jeans and flips off the light before he sees the shadow by the window in the bedroom. Then he snakes a hand back into the bathroom, feels as quietly as he can along the sink counter for his pocketknife. Someone went through the pockets of his faded and tattered cargo pants before taking them from his room, and all his stuff is in a pile on the sink that irritated him at first and now makes him want to sigh with relief. Even a switchblade like Crow's probably won't stop a Dark Signer, but it should give him the time to raise one hell of a racket and maybe draw his attacker out of the house and away from the kids. Then the shadow moves, and Crow freezes. Broad shoulders, tall enough to blot out even the towers of Tops on the horizon, long legs, even after only a single meeting Crow knows that profile. And then a voice comes from it. 

“You have nothing to defend yourself against,” says Godwin's voice, and Crow actually feels his body sag against the wall in a curious mix of relief and anger. "I was merely looking at the city while I waited." 

Crow doesn't bother asking how Godwin got in without Crow hearing him. The answer probably has something to do with Signers and virgin sacrifice. Instead he flips on the switch by the door, spilling soft white light over them both. 

"What do you want?" 

Godwin turns around. There's a thick yellow envelope in his good hand, and he holds it out. 

"This is yours." 

Crow approaches him slowly, warily, more than a little aware that he's barefoot and naked from the waist up. Any illusions Godwin might have harbored about Crow's size and general physical ability, helped along by thick-soled boots and baggy layers, just went straight out the window and off the balcony. Crow takes the envelope with his fingertips, never breaking eye contact. It's like trying to stare down a stray dog, he thinks. 

He pops the tabs on the envelope, feels a thin sheaf of papers come sliding out. He assumes the papers will be something to do with the text and notebook he was provided after lunch. Instead he finds himself staring at a stiff, fancy-looking certificate that says CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH across the top. Underneath are lines even Crow can read with ease: Benjamin Peter Godwin, son of Rex Suyai and Elena Margaret Godwin, born the eighteenth of April, twenty years ago—a full extra year from Crow's own estimate after his first arrest. It lists a birthplace: Domino Receiving West, an extinct hospital in an extinct part of the hospital. And it lists a reissue date: that same day. The original copy, Crow thinks, is probably a decade or more underwater. 

A birth certificate. 

He has a birth certificate. 

Under the birth certificate is a page full of medical gibberish about DNA markers. Crow skims it enough to know he's looking at a paternity test, then looks at the page stapled to it. He wonders if he should cling to the three-tenths of an uncertain percent as proof Godwin might have gotten the wrong Crow. Then he tosses the three sheets on top of the bed so he doesn't have to think about it anymore. It's a mistake he wishes he could take back. 

There's a copy of a photograph underneath. 

The man is Godwin, no doubt; the hair is an awkward length and all black and the hands are both flesh, and there's a mischievous good humor in the gray eyes that seems a million miles removed from the impassive man standing in Crow's window; but the nose is the same, and the mouth, and next to him— 

The woman is short, but her hair is long and very red; her eyes are green but Crow recognizes the shape, and the dimples in her cheeks. She shares them with the little boy in her arms, and oh, Crow wishes he didn't recognize that tiny face from the bathroom mirror. 

Happy little family. Not much longer, if the tiny Crow—no, _Benjamin_ is what they called him then—in the picture is any indication. Crow guesses his own age around two years or so, which means less than a year after this picture was taken the woman in it was dead, her spine snapped under piles of broken concrete and glass. 

The woman. Elena Godwin. His mother. Not much doubt there—her face is only a markerless and slightly rounder version of his own. Something he really could have done without knowing, especially all of a sudden like that. 

A hand comes to rest on Crow's shoulder. “It's the only photograph remaining,” Godwin's voice says. “I had others, but they were destroyed when I left Satellite.” He pauses. “I should have warned you. I apologize." 

Crow wants to scream. Or cry. Or hit something. Or go back to yesterday morning, when he was just another orphan brat. But since he can't go back—and he _could_ scream and hit things in front of Godwin, but he's damned if he _will_ —he just shifts his weight so they're not facing each other. “I should get some sleep. The kids get up early.” 

“I understand.” Crow watches him cross to the bedroom door. "Goodnight, Benjamin." 

"No." 

Godwin's face is blank as ever when he looks back in Crow's direction, but Crow doesn't hesitate to meet it with an angry stare. 

"My name is Crow.” 

“People in Satellite may call you by that name—” 

"No. City records got one thing right. Benjamin Godwin died under the Daedalus Bridge sixteen years ago." 

Godwin doesn't argue with him further. He just turns back to the door and leaves. 

Crow scoops the papers up and tosses them facedown on the dresser before flopping onto the bed. He's never going to sleep, he thinks; he's slept alone before but never alone in a room, and he's sure the silence will keep him awake. 

He lays down anyway. _Shit_ , he thinks, _I forgot to get out of the jeans._

And then he's asleep. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Satellite, things are moving fast. Crow's going to have to hope he can keep up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW SO GUESS WHO'S PILOTING THIS FAILBOAT
> 
> A shipper! 
> 
> . . . . I'll see myself out.
> 
> In all seriousness, I did NOT expect the next chapter to take me a year and a half to write. Surprise, bitch, bet you thought you'd seen the last of me, etc. But AT LONG LAST not only is it done, so is half of the chapter following. 
> 
> One minor warning: if you watched the first half of 5Ds, you know what kind of physical injuries these characters can sustain. I'm not sitting here lovingly detailing every spilled drop of blood, but like . . . it's 5Ds, there's only so much you can clean it up. Be forewarned.

_I'm going to be sick._

It's the thought that makes Crow sit up, his whole midsection a mess of pain and vague nausea, and then he tries to roll out of his bag and almost hits the floor. Because he's not in a bag, he's in a bed. Of course.

He staggers toward the bathroom, pretty sure he's been poisoned. Then he realizes he can see his own hands and feet in a sickish-pale light even though it's full dark and half-moon, and he looks out the window for a whole two seconds before he's out the bedroom door and racing in the direction of the light he can see at the foot of the stairs. 

Godwin is still fully dressed, standing at the glass wall in the living room and staring out over the water toward the sickly purple spider in the sky. His lips are pursed, and his right hand is clamped around the place Crow assumes his stump must end. Godwin's normal complexion is a pale shade that makes Crow think he must not spend much time outside, but now there's an ashy gray pallor under it that makes him look paler still. Crow grabs his shoulder. 

“What the _fuck_ is this,” he manages, and then he claps a hand over his mouth. He can feel everything in there moving in strange ways, and his mouth is filling with spit. Any second now he's going to make a mess of Godwin's carpet. He swallows, then starts counting backward from one hundred by threes. Sometimes it helps.

The duel is painfully short. The spider fades. Godwin takes off across the living room with the long strides of a man too tall to ever have to actually run anywhere—Crow almost has to sprint to keep up. Then they're back in the office Crow sat in earlier, having a cigarette. Godwin hesitates, then steps aside to let Crow under his arm before locking the door.

There's a holoscreen over the desk, a thin glass sheet with a small red circle blinking in the corner. Godwin crosses the room in six long strides and touches it, and a girl with long pink hair appears on Godwin's screen. Her eyes are wide and panicky and a particularly unusual shade of brown, and after a moment's thought Crow places her. Izayoi Aki. The girl Yuusei dueled in the Fortune Cup semifinals, the one who can make her monsters real; who genuinely likes Yuusei, possibly in a way more than just friendly, and hasn't quite figured out she likes him yet. She's in Satellite now, according to Godwin, and—

—and the ID number in the corner of the screen is Yuusei's. Crow thinks of the geoglyph painted on the sky like a bruise, and feels cold all over. Godwin's mouth thins down to a line.

"Where is Yuusei?"

There are tears standing in the corners of her eyes, and it's enough to make Crow go from cold to numb. She blinks them back, and Crow can hear her trying to catch hold of her breath.

“It's bad,” she says at last, and Crow grips the edge of the desk because he can't put his fingers around Rudger's throat. “It's really bad, they were all here and there was this little boy Yuusei knew, they were forced to duel and he—he, the Dark Signer, his name is Rudger, he forced Rally to take his place and—” She closes her eyes. When she speaks again, Crow can hear more tears, this time in her voice. “He sacrificed Yuusei's mother. And he told Yuusei he already dueled someone else. Some friend of Yuusei's and Kiryu's named Crow. He lost. And that—it means he's dead, Director, and Yuusei—”

“Wait, who's dead?” Crow cranes his neck and stands on his toes to get over Godwin's shoulder. “That fucker said I _lost?_ ”

He's about to go on a rant about dishonesty and people who don't have any pride as duelists, but her eyes widen and her mouth drops open and she spins away from the screen.

“Yuusei!”

Yuusei's face on the duelscreen is pale, and his eyes are rimmed red; at the bottom of the frame, Crow can see him holding one stiff shoulder with the other hand. Fuck nausea, Crow feels like he's been stabbed. He's only ever seen that look on Yuusei's face twice in his entire life, and only the first one was an accident—the time Yuusei fell through a rotten dock and spent five agonizing minutes bobbing up and down in polluted seawater while Jack tried to get hold of one of his hands before the rip could tear him away, and even after Crow wiped his face clean and put some of his precious store of saline drops in Yuusei's eyes Yuusei couldn't stop the tears flooding down his cheeks from starey bloodshot eyes, trying to wash out the rainbow sheen from the water's surface.

The second time was Kiryu. And even with the marker, three years have not changed Yuusei's face enough to change the heartbreak that comes with that expression. Crow brushes past Godwin's arm, reaches out for the hologram over the desk without thinking and very nearly says something horrible when his fingers meet only glass. Then the corners of Yuusei's eyes and mouth turn up, a weary and near-automatic smile on a shellshocked face. Somehow it's almost worse.

“You're okay.” Yuusei's eyebrows knit together. “Why are you with Godwin?”

And just like that, there's a wall between them. Crow looks down at the desk.

“Long story.” He looks back up and focuses on Yuusei's shoulder instead. “What's with your arm?”

“Uh—” Yuusei's arm moves, but it doesn't do it in a way Crow likes, and Crow hears a soft hiss of pain. “I. When we were dueling he . . . I got pushed down.”

“You fuckin' broke it.” Crow sighs. “How's your stomach?”

“Funny you should ask.” Yuusei stands up in the seat and hikes his shirt with one arm. Crow stares. The Yuusei he helped cut out of his clothes had bruises the size of fists and a piece of jagged metal as long as Crow's hand buried in his flesh. This Yuusei has no bandages, no stitches, no bruises. Not even a scar. Yuusei drops his shirt and flops back into the seat, then grimaces. “I had a nap at Godwin's and when I woke up there was just this red line. This morning everything was gone.” The pallid smile is gone, the haunted look back in Yuusei's eyes. “Crow . . . ”

“The power of the Crimson Dragon is protecting you,” Godwin's voice says, and Yuusei's face shutters. 

“You never told us your brother was one of the Dark Signers,” he answers, and perversely, Crow is encouraged by the vitriol in Yuusei's voice—and then shocked when Godwin bows his head.

“Until two days ago, I didn't know,” he says. “I assumed it would make no difference until the final battle.”

“When? When we find out who the fifth Signer is?” Yuusei grabs the edges of the screen and then makes a terrible face before shaking it off. Someday Crow really needs to have a talk with him about taking care of injuries, if there is a someday. “We can't win if we don't know the truth, Godwin, and you—”

Godwin holds up a hand to cut Yuusei off. “I still believe all five will be united by the final battle.”

Crow grabs the hand and pushes it down, puts his other hand on his hip. “Are you gonna stop being an asshole and tell him, or am I gonna _start_ being an asshole and tell him?”

Godwin turns his attention from the screen and meets Crow's eyes. Crow stares back, feeling like Godwin is staring straight through his pupils and into the back of his skull. He remembers a trick he learned from Yuusei once and shifts his line of sight ever so slightly to Godwin's eyebrows. At last Godwin sighs and turns back to the screen. Crow watches him tug off the glove over his hand and waits until he's sure Yuusei has seen the mark burned into the metal before he puts his hand down so Godwin can put the glove back on.

“There is research that must be finished before I join you,” Godwin says. “This is not optional, it is imperative. Crow is here to assist me. I had hoped for more time, but if the Dark Signers have begun taking hostages that is no longer an option. What I would ask of you now is avoidance. Should you be challenged directly turn down any duel requested of you—”

“They _killed_ Martha—”

“ _Martha?_ ” And suddenly Izayoi's words come back to him, words he more or less ignored because they made no sense: _Yuusei's mother._ Of course. She might know Martha runs a safe house like Crow's, isn't actually Yuusei's mother by blood, but a city girl wouldn't know what else to call her. Yuusei closes his eyes. Crow watches two more tears slide down his cheeks and tries to breathe. Martha has never been a parent to him as she was to Yuusei, but she has always been kind, and more than once she's taken his kids in for a meal when he was too sick to handle the black market.

“And Rally.” He opens his eyes, and Crow is terrified by the fury in them. “And you want me to _wait_ —”

“There is no hope for my brother. Nor Kiryu.” Godwin runs over Yuusei's anger with a sentence as clipped and cold as winter air. “But if your friends were used as pawns rather than becoming Dark Signers themselves—for them, there may still be a chance. One that will die with you, if you rush into this fight on emotion and anger. I know my brother well enough to say that is precisely what he would want. Difficult as it is, _wait_. Do not allow them to take action, even should it mean you bury your deck in the sand and walk unarmed. Give me three days. I will join you in Satellite.”

“He was going to sacrifice Martha's entire house!”

“Then keep away from it.”

Yuusei opens his mouth to argue. Crow shakes his head.

“Go back to—” He frowns. “Did you fix that data leak in your duelscreen?”

Yuusei gives Crow a look to crack stone. Crow crosses his arms. Yuusei sighs. “No.”

“Okay.” He thinks. “You remember where we went, that one time when we went joyriding after you finished the D-wheel? Not this one, your first one. You know the time I mean.”

“Yeah.”

“Go there. It's as safe as anywhere. And Yuusei?”

“Yeah?”

“Stop by mine first. If you go in the hurt locker you'll find a bottle of acetominophen—”

“A real one?” Yuusei's mouth falls open. Crow rolls his eyes.

“Yes, _a real one_. There's a white envelope underneath it with pills that say 3604 V on them. Take two and wait fifteen minutes before they set your arm. You ain't gonna be up before noon, but you won't feel _shit_.”

Yuusei hesitates, then nods. Crow cranes to see what's happening along the sides of the bike. “Yo! Izayoi!” 

The girl's face appears on the screen again. She looks startled. Crow nods at Yuusei. 

“If he navigates, can you steer?”

Izayoi's face goes from startled to stunned. “You mean— _the D-wheel?_ ”

“You got any better ideas?”

“Maybe—maybe Ushio-san . . . ”

Crow raises an eyebrow at her. “If you think either of us would let a cop on our D-wheels, you're crazy.”

Izayoi bites her lip and stares down at Yuusei's duel panel like she thinks it might grow teeth and take a chunk out of her arm. Then she looks back up and nods, and in spite of all Crow's glad to see it—a glimpse of the girl Yuusei faced in the Fortune Cup, ready to raise hell and take revenge. For the right reasons, this time.

“It won't be fast,” she says, and Crow shrugs. One good bump and Yuusei's going to be howling anyway. Nothing, _nothing_ , in Crow's entire life has ever frightened him as badly as the ride to Martha's, holding Yuusei in the punch seat with a single hand fisted in his jacket and mumbling the whole way-- _hang in there_ and _it's okay_ and you're gonna be fine and at one point _don't you fuckin pass out on me, Yuusei_ \--and wishing Yuusei would start screaming or moaning or even cussing him out, because any of those would be better than that kind of ghastly silence.

“Get there in one piece, is all,” he tells her. “And tell Yuusei I said he better sleep, 'cause if he's up all night on his damn D-wheel with a broken arm I'm gonna fucking kill him.” Izayoi glances at Godwin, who nods ever so slightly at the screen.

“Stay in touch,” is all he says. “I will join you as soon as possible.”

Izayoi nods and turns off the screen. Crow turns to Godwin.

“Any good reason you weren't gonna fucking tell them?”

“Because Yuusei is a natural leader, and chafes under any authority he did not choose. This much I knew of him from Jack, and what I observed of him in the Facility only confirmed it. Yuusei is the one who could gather the Signers and make them fight as one. Had he known my identity from the first he would have tried to cede, however unwillingly, because I am the one who knows the most of the Crimson Dragon. So I read him, at least. The wise man knows his weaknesses, and trying to lead a group so disparate would certainly be one of mine.”

“You did it in Satellite.”

Godwin shakes his head. “I haven't kept up with how the story has changed in fifteen years. But the truth of the matter is that I did very little leading at all. I didn't even realize anyone but you was watching me until the day one of the knots slipped and I didn't take a beam to the head because someone else caught it first.” He rubs his temples with one hand, a finger in each small dent in a gesture Crow knows from Martha. He wonders if Godwin also gets the strange headaches that come with flashing lights and bright colors that sometimes leave Martha in bed until evening; on such days Crow sometimes gets a visit from a kid more daring than most of Martha's bunch, and that night Martha's table will seat five more than usual. Sometimes six, if Martha's well enough to help him finish cooking, but more often than not Crow finds himself quietly serving her a bowl in bed while the kids do the dishes. 

Then Crow remembers Martha may never have one of her headaches again, and feels like someone stabbed him in the heart with an icepick. He tries to imagine a future in which he lives in Martha's house and takes care of her kids and shoves the thought away. He puts his head down in case he cries. Then he clenches his eyes shut and counts backward from one hundred by threes to keep the tears in and resolutely does not think about the last time he got marked, when Martha put aloe on the laser mark without comment and carefully opened the two abscesses in his cheek before they could fester. 

Godwin touches his shoulder. Crow opens his eyes, but keeps his head down. There's a small glass of brown liquid in front of him.

“This isn't recommended medical procedure,” Godwin's voice says. “But I suspect you could use it.” 

Crow takes the glass and downs it in a single swallow before what's in it can tremble and give him away. Then he starts coughing. It burns all the way down, and “all the way down” has never felt so long before.

“What the _fuck_ —”

“Brandy. You were shaking.” Godwin takes the glass. “Did she also raise you?”

Crow stares. “Is there _anything_ you don't snoop about?”

“I did not 'snoop.' I deduced.” 

“Right.” Crow turns toward the door.

“Miss Izayoi called her Yuusei's mother,” Godwin says. “Thus, she is an older woman. That you know her equally well, or at least have a strong connection to her, is also clear; she is not a friend of Yuusei's you have met as an acquaintance. A woman who spends her days raising multiple children in a house is not the kind who needs to seek money through less than legal means, therefore she is not a work partner. Your reaction to the news suggests she is a great deal more to you than a client for whom you may have worked. I ask what connection you, then, might have to an older woman who is of great emotional consequence to your closest friend, if she is not someone who solicited you professionally. Either she raised you, or has been instrumental in your ability to raise your own children. There is no other conclusion possible.”

Crow pauses. “You got all that from a _sentence._ ”

“Most of it, yes.”

Crow considers. “Then do it again.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Do something else the same way.”

“You've had multiple injuries in the last six months, at least one quite serious. There's Vicodin in your medicine cabinet, rather than with your cigarettes; you know the medical dose for it, as well. Your close friend has taken two serious injuries of his own in the last three days that you treat as routine, you live in a dangerous part of Satellite and work with heavy machinery on a regular basis. The nature of the injury is in question, but large cuts and burns are both in line with your hobbies.”

Crow sighs and holds up his right arm. The marks on Yuusei's arm are bright red; the ones on Crow's are, too, but with time his will fade to white—a thick slash, and a jagged line next to it. There are tiny white pockmarks on either side of both. Stitches aren't Crow's strong suit. Then he turns around again.

“She didn't raise me, but sometimes she feeds my kids,” he says. “And she—she's helped me, a few times.” 

Godwin closes his eyes and nods. Then he opens them and looks up at the bookshelf before glancing back at Crow.

“I may not be here in the morning,” he says. “With the catastrophe at the Arcadia building, I don't have the option of remaining home. But everything here is at your disposal for your research. I will give you what notes I have on the line I've set you on. Should you require more direct contact the desk holo here is connected directly to my office. I can leave the number on the desk.”

Crow nods, but he's not thinking about the research. Instead he's wondering if all seven people in Yuusei's group can actually fit in his shack, or if they'll have to split up and take to the surrounding warehouses that still actually have roofs to speak of. There's no problem with sleeping in them—Crow encourages rather than discourages the stray cats in the neighborhood, and they keep both rats and roaches to a manageable level—but he has a terrible feeling about all of them splitting up. Godwin frowns at the bookshelf and crosses to it, puts his hand in a gap. There's no dust in it, Crow notices. Fancy. Godwin shakes his head and pulls a book off the shelf before taking a seat and pulling up a datascreen, then a holoscreen to make a call. The clown appears on the other side, and Crow walks out in disgust. 

He spends ten minutes tossing in bed before deciding it's a lost cause. He won't be sleeping tonight, and so at last he takes the book Godwin gave him and his notebook and heads for the living room. It's a huge open space, and if he sits by the window he can almost pretend he's not inside at all.

There's still a light on in Godwin's office, and Crow pokes his head through the door in spite of himself. Godwin isn't on the holo anymore; instead there's a stylus in his left hand and a datascreen open on the glass sheet beneath it, and a book open under his right arm.

“Do you _ever_ sleep?”

Godwin's eyes barely flick up from the book before going back to whatever he's reading. “It's slow coming these days.” 

Crow considers butting back out and heading to the darkened living room. Then he heads into the office, drags one of the chairs from the front of the desk in front of the window, and flops down in it with his notebook, legs over one arm and head against the other. He gets half a page into his reading before he frowns and looks up over the top of the book.

“You got a straightedge?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Something I can use to draw a line with. I got a straightedge in my tools, but it ain't here.”

Godwin opens a drawer and shuffles through it before turning around and passing Crow a strip of silicone. “I don't have a square ruler in the house.”

Crow takes the strip and lays it on his paper. It sticks, and he traces the pencil along it. “This works.” He pauses. “Thanks.”

“Of course.”

Crow studies the diagram he's slowly compiling onto the paper. Then he looks back at the text and rubs a hand over his eyes as it doubles, then blurs.

“What time is it?”

“A quarter of midnight.”

Crow sighs and swings his legs off the arm of the chair. “I gotta go get Daichi. He still pees the bed if you don't take him to the bathroom.”

“If you leave him through the night he'll figure it out.”

“I ain't got time to be washing a bag every single day,” Crow says, and stands up. “And maybe city folks go for that stuff, but I don't. You don't teach a kid better embarrassing the shit out of 'em.”

“It's not a matter of embarrassment,” Godwin answers. “It's a matter of consequences.”

“Right,” Crow tells him. “I'm going to take parenting advice from the guy who left his kid under a fucking bridge.”

“I told you why—”

Crow waves a hand to cut him off. To his surprise, it works. “I don't care.”

“I had no choice.”

“Tell yourself that if it gets you to sleep at night. I wouldn't just fucking leave any of my kids. I sure as _shit_ wouldn't leave one I gave birth to.”

“Did you?”

He's almost out the door already, but the question is so bizarre he turns around. “Did I what?”

“Are any of them yours?”

“They're all mine.”

“By birth.”

“Not fucking likely. Maybe you get it together with anybody who asks—” Godwin stands up, and Crow should probably shut up, but shutting up has never been one of his talents—“but I mostly stick to whatever keeps me in one piece in the facility, if you get me.”

“I understand your anger, but I will not tolerate false accusations.” Godwin's voice is deceptively quiet, and even knowing how very badly this could turn out Crow can't help feeling a moment of triumph. Godwin is _pissed._

“You got into this city on a fucking motorcycle without nothing but your deck and an idea and you think I fucking believe that?”

Crow sees the metal hand go up, and flinches; he's been on the wrong end of enough guards to know how this ends, and the surface of that mechanized arm won't yield like flesh does. There's a heavy _bang_ from the desk, and Crow opens his eyes wondering if he's been shot. Instead he sees small splinters along the desk's edge, and the metal hand still resting there. He makes a sound in the back of his throat and shakes his head.

“You know something, fuck you,” he says, and turns around and walks out.

\----------------------

He doesn't know what time Godwin gets up in the morning; Crow has never had much need for clocks, even with one built right into his D-wheel. But he knows he himself is usually up with the sun in summer, and substantially before it in winter, and the window in the room Godwin has put him in faces east. Crow isn't awake when the sun first touches the top windows of the Security building but he's up soon enough after to watch the water of the inlet turn from murky predawn gray to pink and silver and white.

He's on his way downstairs when he sees the light in Godwin's office, and he turns abruptly in the other direction before stopping and turning back. The kids will be awake soon enough, and he won't have time later.

Godwin is arranging papers on the desk, mouth set in a tight line, jacket rumpled. Crow wonders if he slept at all. Then he wonders why he should care.

“Hey.”

Godwin looks up, face not its usual blank mask but one more carefully constructed to be neutral. “Yes?”

Crow shuffles into the room, just barely past the edge of the door. He'd like to clump in with all the cheerful self-satisfaction he manages in daily life, but can't quite bring himself to do it. “Uh—” He scratches the back of his arm where the scar from a fallen piece of D-wheel frame is still healing. “I wanted to say I'm sorry about last night. I mean—I think what you did was _shit_ , but that doesn't mean I needed to be shitty about it too.”

“I accept your apology.” There's the kind of pause where Crow can tell Godwin wants to speak and hasn't entirely put the words together, and then Godwin glances at the splinters on the corner of the desk. “And offer one of my own. I knew when I brought you here that I would be causing you pain justifiable only because to leave you in Satellite right now would be to cause you more still. I should have better held my temper.”

“Thanks.” Crow rubs the back of his neck. Then he crosses the office and holds out a hand. Godwin blinks at it in surprise.

“The motherfuckers want hell on earth so bad, let's give 'em a taste of it, yeah?”

The side of Godwin's mouth quirks up in a smile that flickers, there and then gone again like one of the small silver fish Crow can still catch on the far side of Satellite sometimes, and he takes the hand. “I told Life I would speak with Death,” he says. “And he said, 'you hear him now'.” 

“That's on the Daedalus Bridge.”

“Indeed it is. A very accurate summation of both those days and these.” Godwin lets go of their handshake first, and reaches for a cup of coffee Crow didn't notice before. “I've had three calls from Security already this morning asking when I'll arrive. I'm afraid I must take my leave of you.”

“Wait, if I have to call you how do I get past your secretary?”

Godwin pauses, and Crow can tell it never occurred to him “a direct line to his office” still has to go through someone else. Then he hesitates. At last he speaks. “Tell him Benjamin is calling, and I'll arrange that any such calls reach me without delay.”

Crow wants to say there has to be a better way than that, but the truth is that on short notice, there probably isn't. “Okay.” For today, at least.   
\-------------------

_There has to be a better way than this._

Crow keeps the hood of Godwin's light jacket pulled up over his head until he's in front of the elevators. Then he pulls it down; he's really going to need his peripheral vision for this. He glances around until he spots the stairwell.

_Yuusei would love it._

_Yeah, but Yuusei's not here._

_Yeah, but when you see him again you can tell him about it, and_ then _he'll love it._

No argument there, Crow thinks, and pushes the Up button. He's not a fan of elevators—he was trapped in one in Satellite once, and the whole time he could hear it creaking and swaying in the shaft and see little flakes of rust in the walls—but this whole building is gleaming glass and marble and metal, and with the precious Director of the city contained in its walls he thinks he can take a safe guess this elevator, at least, will work. 

Off to one side, he sees a woman stop at the sight of his cheek. She hurries to a telephone.

_Here we go._

The elevator opens. Crow steps inside and jams down on the button for the fourth floor, then hits the Door Close button before tightening the strap on his bag. In the lobby, someone is loudly insisting they saw a Satellite get on the elevator, and the last Crow sees of it is two uniformed officers heading his way.

The fourth floor turns out to be a bunch of cubicles, and Crow tears through it at a dead run, men and women shouting in surprise on either side of him. He straightarms the door open and runs up a flight of stairs, neck craned straight up to see what's above him, and then he jumps for a railing in the middle of the next flight. His fingers scrape on rough ornamental concrete, and he swings a leg over the edge and springboards up another story before running a flight. He can see darkness on the other side of the window into this particular floor, and he slips onto it with no small amount of caution.

It looks like some kind of storage unit; there are boxes on boxes on boxes of files and other assorted junk. Crow slows to a fast walk so he can get his bearings amid the maze of shelves. At last he spots the elevator and jumps back on.

The number next to the elevator is nine, and Crow dutifully pushes twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen. At twelve he jumps off and races across the floor again, this time only just missing someone's taser stick. 

_If I didn't time this right, I'm fucked._

Up three flights, and he dives into the elevator with his bag crammed between his arm and his side just as the doors close before hitting the button for twenty-four. He might have to go between someone's legs on the other side.

Instead he barrels out into an atrium, and news of his escape doesn't seem to have reached these upper floors yet. The atmosphere is serene, and after a moment's look around Crow spots the iron girders that support some kind of refracted skylight arch Yuusei would go crazy for. At least four floors above this one are open to the girders, and Crow starts climbing. There's a shout below him, and his legs turn to rubber. Too much adrenaline. 

_You can't give up now, you're almost into the thirties!_

He springboards from one set of girders to another, and from the second set dives for the railing around one of the floors open to the atrium. For a minute he thinks he's going to fall, and then he's on the twenty-seventh story. He jams the elevator button, then thinks better of it and heads back for the stairs. Surely by now the elevator is off-lim—

_another one?_

There is. On the other side of the floor, probably starting at the atrium and heading on up, and he slams down on the Up button. Until now he's been protected by the sluggishness of Security in responding to what must seem a completely impossible threat; now they'll be catching up, and he's way too many floors aboveground to consider jumping out a window if they close in.

The elevator spits him out on the thirty-fifth floor. He just makes it into the stairwell, heart pounding, legs a red agony of overexertion, and stumbles his way through a jump onto the thirty-sixth. He staggers up the last flight and slams open the door.

The top floor is carpeted, and so quiet he can hear his own breathing. His bag bangs against his hip. One of these rooms is Godwin's office, and he's damned if he knows which one.

At the other end of the hall, the elevator doors slide open. Crow hears someone yell _there he is_ , and he picks a door at random and streaks toward it as fast as his legs will still go. He feels a hand on the back of his shirt and throws an elbow backward as he slams the door open, and then Godwin—and a whole series of men and women in clothes that probably cost more than everything Crow owns—is staring up at him from around a polished wooden table, startled. Crow dips a hand into his bag and displays a corner of the book weighing him down.

“I got it,” he gasps, and someone grabs his elbows from behind.

“Director! Are you all right?”

Godwin gets to his feet, mouth thinned down to a line. “Really, Aikawa? I expect better in Security's own house. Let him go.”

The hands on Crow's elbows tighten. “But Director, this man—”

“—is a reformed thief from Satellite in the city as part of a project to test our security, which I must say you have quite miserably failed. He has authorization to be here. Release him.”

The hands on Crow's elbows vanish. Godwin bows slightly to the other occupants of the table.

“I'm afraid I have business with this young man that can't wait, ladies and gentlemen,” Godwin says. “We can resume this afternoon. Mikage.”

Crow frowns as the tiny blue-haired woman next to Godwin scrambles to get his things together. Godwin heads for the door and pushes it open, then gestures Crow in front of him. “After you.”

Crow goes where he's sent, still barely able to believe he actually made it to the top floor. He's broken into Security often enough to know how their officers react, but thirty-seven floors is about thirty-two more than he's ever attempted before. Godwin ushers him into a large room that overlooks the city and motions to a chair, and Crow collapses into it. The woman Godwin called Mikage scuttles in and puts his notes on the desk.

“Why did you not call?”

“I did, and I was told the Director doesn't take personal calls,” Crow manages. Godwin opens a small door in the wall and takes out a bottle of water. He hands it to Crow, who drains half of it in one go.

“You'll have to tell me sometime how precisely one manages to break into not just a storage warehouse, but the Security Maintenance Bureau itself,” Godwin says. “For now, tell me: is this unexpected visit to do with the research I asked you to complete?”

Crow nods. Godwin frowns.

“Get your breath back,” he says. “I have to make a call.”

Crow nods again. Then he sips his water. Godwin makes not one call but two, and then stands by Crow's chair with a look of what Crow assumes is concern.

“You have a bathroom in here?”

“Across the hall.”

Crow nods again and puts down his water. He's had to piss since the near miss with the taser stick, and drinking is helping his breath and his burning throat but not his bladder.

Godwin is waiting outside the door when he finishes, and a simple nod of the head turns Crow toward the end of the hall he just came down in the opposite direction. Crow trots after him, then ducks under his arm when Godwin opens a door.

Inside the room he sees Mikage and the clown. Then a very tall someone _else_ , who grabs his hands and begins shaking his arms vigorously.

“How _wonderful!_ ” the someone else shouts, in a tone that suggests they have only three volumes: loud, louder, and—perhaps while sleeping—off. “That the Director's son and heir should join us at last, as we near the completion of the new Momentum—”

“Akutsu,” Godwin's voice says, and Crow's arms drop abruptly back to his sides before the tall man bows so deeply Crow thinks for a second he's going to fall. “Crow. I had hoped to give you a more formal introduction, but when I find you climbing the Security stairwells I assume time must be of importance. The three people in this room with you are vital heads of Iliaster. Jaeger you already know. Mikage you may be familiar with through Jack.”

Crow sticks out a hand. Mikage blinks at it, then shakes it. The tall man takes a seat with incredible speed, and as Godwin follows he says what Crow already suspected: this man is Akutsu, head of the new M.I.D.S. department. The four of them sit in a room Godwin only bothered to hit two of the light switches on, and Crow is forcefully reminded of sitting before a judge's chair.

“I do not know what brought Crow here today,” Godwin says. “I asked him two days ago to assist me by sifting the Iliaster compendium of Momentum and the Moon Tower, and so I assume it pertains to this. You have our complete attention when you wish to begin.”

“Okay,” Crow says. “First I need to ask a question. Because I'm pretty sure we're fucked, but how _bad_ we're fucked I dunno 'cause I don't speak machine. Not this kind of machine, anyway.”

“Any answers we may have are entirely at your disposal.”

“Momentum runs on a central . . . like, there's a rod, or a core or something in it, and that's what keeps it spinning,” Crow says. “I read about it on the M.I.D.S. website today. Is the force that's generated when it spins called angular torque moment?”

“It is,” Akutsu says. “The torque at its inner and outer edges aren't the same, and the friction between the two generates electric energy.”

Crow swears. Godwin just looks impassive.

“How bad is it?”

“Really bad,” Crow answers, and pulls the book out of his bag. It's actually a binder he swiped from Godwin's shelf, but the contents were originally ten-year-old budget proposals, and he didn't feel too badly dumping the stack of paper on the sofa so he could use the cover. He plops it down on the table in front of Godwin with a flat _clop_ sound and flips it open to the drawing he started the night before.

“So according to the pictures of the Moon Tower in that book you gave me, it's a square-sided pyramid. Totally solid, all one piece.”

“A traditional step pyramid in the style of the Aztecs, yes,” Godwin agrees. “Is this blueprint yours?”

“I don't build shit out of books,” Crow says. “You want Yuusei for that. What I can do is look at what something _does_ and then figure out how to make something else do it. And according to that book, the Moon Tower opened some kind of dimensional gateway. It used the wind to do it, and when you had some giant typhoon or something—”

“Zero Reverse,” Mikage gasps, and then covers her mouth with both hands. Crow pulls the drawing out of the book and puts it next to a second one he started only this morning.

“That's what I think, yeah,” he says. “There's a drawing that shows the top half of the pyramid lifted up like one a them kids' whirligigs where you pull the string and it flies, you know the thing I'm talking about?”

“I do.” Godwin's brows furrow. Behind him, Akutsu looks slightly bewildered. Jaeger is nodding.

“Those things run on wind too. And there's one thing I'm better at than Yuusei, and that's knowing how wind works. I wouldn't bet my kids this is what it looked like from above when it opened up, but I might bet my nest.”

Akutsu squints at the drawing. “Why, this is a blueprint of the Momentum axis!”

“That's just it, it's _not_ ,” Crow says. “I drew it and _then_ I checked out the website. _This_ is the blueprint of the Momentum axis.” He pulls out a printout and lays it under his drawing. Held up to the light, the two are nearly identical. Godwin frowns.

“Those blueprints aren't supposed to be public.”

“They're not, I used your security code. Don't look at me that way, your password is lame as shit. I needed more tries to spell it than to guess it. Doesn't matter right now. What matters is the weather forecast.”

“The original Momentum is far underground,” Jaeger says, with that annoying _hi-hi-hi_ that makes Crow want to punch him in the face. “No simple wind current would—”

“If I have this right, it doesn't actually have to touch the reactor tower,” Crow cuts in. “It just has to create a, a, shit, like a whirlpool but wind instead of water. If I get what's going on, _Old Momentum is already running again._ All it needs is a power-up, and that's exactly what that kind of air would give it.”

“It can't be running again, we would have recorded seismic activity,” Godwin says. His eyebrows are drawn so closely together, frowning down at the blueprints, that Crow thinks they might grow into a single large line of grizzled hair. “The ground throughout that part of Satellite is unstable. Even the normal force put out by the new Momentum would be enough to cause tremors.” Crow puts his hands on his hips.

“Either it _is_ or it's _going to be_ and if it's not already then it's gonna be soon, like _really_ soon,” he says. “And I think when it does Satellite's going to be in a world of— _shit_!”

Crow hits the ground ass-first as Akutsu grabs his binder and Godwin jerks his head toward the windows, eyes fixed on a single point on the horizon. Crow follows his gaze and sees a spear of strange black lightning touch down on a small, drab island on the horizon.

_Satellite!_

“Director!”

“Director Godwin!”

“ _Yo!_ ”

Godwin jerks at the sound of Crow's voice. “Yes,” he says. His voice sounds calm, but Crow feels like something not at all calm is running beneath it. “I think your point is amply made. What do you think this force will unleash?”

“As far as I can tell, the first time the rotation of the Moon Tower was reversed, it let out the fucking Earthbound Gods,” Crow spits out. “What the _hell_ is that in Satellite—”

“Our time is short. That—” Godwin gestures to the horizon—“is an emergency that will require all my attention at the soonest possible moment, so please, finish.”

Crow takes a deep breath. “Okay. Old Momentum starts. Probably right fucking now. This air current, if they can get it, makes it worse. I think it'd be a _second_ Zero Reverse. But—the Earthbound Gods, the way we see them, I mean, they're not really real. If they can get that kind of power they can let out the _real_ Earthbound Gods. The ones the cards just kind of . . . ” Crow waves a hand impatiently.

“The cards, you believe, are only avatars of the true supernatural force, and not as powerful?”

“Yeah,” Crow says. He doesn't know what an avatar is, but he's pretty sure they get the idea. “And then we'd be like kids with buckets trying to empty the inter-city channel. Good fucking luck. I'm pretty sure that kind of air current is really rare, normally. But this ain't normal.”

“Agreed,” Godwin says, and then he spits out a couple of words Crow only recognizes by the tone they're said in—he guesses swears must sound the same in every language. Crow looks up at the window and feels his eyes grow wide at the sight of Satellite surrounded by what looks like a dark, lightning-filled upside-down bowl.

“Akutsu, secure Momentum,” he says, and Akutsu bows and hurries away. “Jaeger, call Satellite-side Security at once. If communications are running, order a series of dual-officer patrols into all sectors, including B.A.D. outside the quarantine zone. All citizens of Satellite are to be evacuated to Northside Sectors Three and Four. Make it clear these are _not_ arrests or detentions and no force is to be used. Satellites may choose not to accept evacuation if they wish, but should they do so, we cannot guarantee their safety. Mikage, take Crow home.”

“Wait, wait, what about the quarantine zone? What the fuck is that, even?” Crow strains against the hand Mikage lays on his arm. She's stronger than she looks.

“Approximately one-third of a mile around the site of Old Momentum.” Godwin shakes his head. “If anyone was inside that area . . . I'm afraid, for them, it is already too late.”

“You've got to check! You can't just fucking say that, you've got to be sure!” Mikage is steering him toward the door. “You can't just fucking abandon more people!”

“Director, there seems to be a problem with the main and alternate communications channels,” Jaeger's voice breaks in. “Neither Cityside Main nor South Sector are responding.”

Mikage stops steering and gasps. Godwin frowns.

“Try the radio signal.”

“Only static on channels two and three. Five is silent.”

“Nine?”

There's a pause. Then a loud screeching noise fills the room, and Jaeger drops his holo on the floor like it's become suddenly red hot. Mikage throws her hands over her ears. Crow dives for the holo at the same time Godwin barely starts forward.

There's a large purple shape on the screen.

Crow pushes the button on the side twice; he's seen holos often enough to know how they turn on and off. But instead of losing power, the screen just starts to pulse in pale purple flashes that seem to eat into his brain like acid. _Where is Yuusei where are the Signers what did you tell them what is Momentum what is the Moon Tower do you know what do you know what do you know what do you—_

Crow twists his head to one side with eyes slammed shut, swings his arm, slams the holo into the corner of the table. There's a tinkle of broken glass, and the screeching stops.

“Satellite's gone,” he says, and his voice sounds too loud for the sudden silence. “I got here too fucking late.” He takes another two or three breaths. “They got Security. They tried to get me, too.”

“Through the holo,” Godwin says at last. Crow notes a minute tremble under his voice.

“Yeah.” Crow turns his head, slowly, looks at the small shattered glass and metal cylinder that used to be Jaeger's personal computer. “I could hear him. In my head.”

“Rudger?”

“Someone else. Not Kiryu and not a woman.”

Godwin makes a Yuusei kind of noise in the back of his throat. There's a soft shuffle behind Crow.

“You did right,” says a high-pitched voice, and Crow's shocked to realize it's Jaeger, reacting to the loss of his property. “The information about the Moon Tower is something we must assume they have but hope they haven't, and protect at all costs if they don't.”

“Director,” Mikage says. All three of them turn to her. Somehow, Crow thinks, she's grown in the last few minutes; her back seems straighter, eyes fiercer, mouth more determined. “We need to be on the ground.”

“Yes,” Godwin answers. He sounds vaguely stunned. “Crow. Please allow Mikage to escort you.”

Crow glances out the window. Yuusei is somewhere under that black bowl. So are Martha's kids, and Jack, and the other Signers. The people Crow plays poker with and, hell, even the officers he strips for. It's not paradise, but it's home.

“If you got somebody else who can take me so I don't get killed on the train, that's okay,” he says at last. “I think she needs to go with you.”

“I can make arrangements on our way out,” Mikage says. Godwin meets Crow's eyes. Crow raises an eyebrow back. Godwin lets out a barely-perceptible sigh.

“Very good, then,” he says. “Mikage, if you'd be so kind.”


End file.
